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Your agency recommends all kinds of useful tactics to help improve the local SEO for your local business clients, but how many of those techniques are leveraging Google Business Profile (GBP) to attract as many walk-ins as possible?

Today, I’m sharing five GBP tweaks worthy of implementation to help turn digital traffic into foot traffic. I’ve ordered them from easiest to hardest, but as you’ll see, even the more difficult ones aren’t actually very daunting — all the more reason to try them out!

It looks like Coast Nissan has a customer who is ready to walk through the door if they receive an answer. But as you can see, the question has gone unanswered. Note, too, that four people have thumbed the question up, which signifies a shared interest in a potential answer, but it’s still not making it onto the radar of this particular dealership.

Nearly all verticals could have overlooked leads sitting in their GBPs — from questions about dietary options at a restaurant, to whether a retailer stocks a product, to queries about ADA compliance or available parking. Every ask represents a possible lead, and in a competitive retail landscape, who can afford to ignore such an opportunity?

The easiest way for Google My Business (GMB) listing owners and managers to get notified of new questions is via the Google Maps App, as notifications are not yet part of the main GMB dashboard. This will help you catch questions as they arise. The faster your client responds to incoming queries, the better their chances of winning the foot traffic.

2) Post about your proximity to nearby major attractions

Difficulty level: Easy

Imagine someone has just spent the morning at a museum, a landmark, park, or theatre. After exploring, perhaps they want to go to lunch, go apparel shopping, find a gas station, or a bookstore near them. A well-positioned Google Post, like the one below, can guide them right to your client’s door:

This could become an especially strong draw for foot traffic if Google expands its experiment of showing Posts’ snippets not just in the Business Profile and Local Finder, but within local packs:

3) Turn GBPs into storefronts

Difficulty level: Easy for retailers

With a little help from SWIS and Pointy, your retail clients’ GBPs can become the storefront window that beckons in highly-converting foot traffic. Your client’s “See What’s In Store inventory” appears within the Business Profile, letting customers know the business has the exact merchandise they’re looking for:

I’ll reiterate my prediction that SWIS is the “next big thing” in local, and when last I spoke with Mark, one percent of all US retailers had already adopted his product. Encourage your retail clients to sign up and give them an amazing competitive edge on driving foot traffic!

4) Make your profile pic a selfie hotspot

Difficulty level: Medium (feasible for many storefronts)

When a client has a physical premise (and community ordinances permit it), an exterior mural can turn through traffic into foot traffic — it also helps to convert Instagram selfie-takers into customers. As I mentioned in a recent blog post, a modest investment in this strategy could appeal to the 43–58 percent of survey respondents who are swayed to shop in locations that are visually appealing.

If a large outdoor mural isn’t possible, there’s plenty of inspiration for smaller indoor murals, here.

Once the client has made the investment in providing a cultural experience for the community, they can try experimenting with getting the artwork placed as the cover photo on their GBP — anyone looking at a set of competitors in a given area will see this appealing, extra reason to choose their business over others.

Mark my words, local search marketers: We are on the verge of seeing Americans reject the constricted label of “consumer” in a quest for a more holistic view of themselves as whole persons. Local businesses that integrate art, culture, and community life into their business models will be well-placed to answer what, in my view, is a growing desire for authentic human experiences. As a local search marketer, myself, this is a topic I plan to explore further this year.

5) Putting time on your side

Difficulty level: Medium (feasible for willing clients)

Here’s a pet peeve of mine: businesses that serve working people but are only open 9–5. How can your client’s foot traffic achieve optimum levels if their doors are only open when everybody is at work?

So, here’s the task: Do a quick audit of the hours posted on the GBPs of your client’s direct competitors. For example, I found three craft shops in one small city with these hours:

Guess which competitor is getting all of the business after 6 PM every day of the week, when most people are off work and able to shop?

Now, it may well be that some of your smaller clients are already working as many hours as they can, but have they explored whether their hours are actually ideal for their customers’ needs and whether any time slots aren’t being filled in the community by their competitors? What if, instead of operating under the traditional 9–5, your client switched to 11–7, since no other competitor in town is open after 5 PM? It’s the same number of hours and your client would benefit from getting all the foot traffic of the 9–5-ers.

Alternatively, instead of closing on Saturdays, the business closed on Mondays — perhaps this is the slowest of their weekdays? Being open on the weekend could mean that the average worker can now access said business and become a customer.

It will take some openness to change, but if a business agrees to implementation, don’t forget to update the GMB hours and push out the new hours to the major citation platforms via a service like Moz Local.

Your turn to add your best GMB moves

I hope you’ll take some of these simple GBP tips to an upcoming client meeting. And if they decide to forge ahead with your tips, be sure to monitor the outcomes! How great if a simple audit of hours turned into a foot traffic win for your client?

In the meantime, if you have any favorite techniques, hacks, or easy GMB wins to share with our community, I’d love to read your comments!

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As eCommerce retailers find it more time-consuming and expensive to generate new customers, they are increasingly looking to their loyalty programs. And customers are certainly eager to sign up. In 2017, there were 3.8 billion memberships of loyalty programs in the US alone.

But overall growth has also slowed. Many retailers are struggling to retain members. They’re also finding it difficult to prompt them to take meaningful actions like make purchases and send referrals.

So what’s the solution?

One option is to use data derived from your rewards program to improve the experience of those who have signed up.

By leveraging a number of data-points, you can build a program that boosts engagement while also driving a number of key metrics, like purchase frequency, average order value, referrals, lifetime value and more.

In this post, we’re going to identify the most important types of data and how to use that data to create meaningful changes.

What data can you generate from a rewards program?

Segmentation data – This is data about the demographic makeup of your loyalty program membership, and encompasses age, location, marital status, gender etc.

Reward-specific data – Which rewards, promotions and giveaways are most popular? Determining which products and voucher codes are redeemed most often is usually a relatively simple process.

Membership activity – Activity refers to the degree to which your members are interacting with your program. How many points have they redeemed? How many have been left sitting? How many vouchers have been used? This data is immensely useful for deciding which members to prioritize.

Personal details – This is individual data that you have extracted on the basis of membership of your loyalty program. It can include birth dates, reward preferences, specific location and so on.

So how do you get started? Here are four data-based ways to improve the customer experience of members of your loyalty program.

1. Segment rewards by activity and demographics

Segmentation works for both VIP members, who have high purchase frequency and regularly redeem their points, and for members that do not exhibit a high level of engagement.

For your top members, offering high-value rewards will encourage engagement with your program over the long term. By picking and contacting certain groups, and even individuals, for exclusive rewards, you can provide the best possible incentives in a cost-effective way.

Showcasing unique rewards and giveaways via email to members that are inactive, under-engaged or sitting on a large number of unredeemed points will also further increase retention among those most likely to drop off. It’s usually viable to allocate extra resources to this segment because they represent a high-potential group – they’re existing customers who have already signed up – with the greatest contribution to your overall churn rate.

Segmentation can also work effectively when unique promotions and rewards are designed on the basis of demographic information like age, location, marital status etc. By tailoring reward initiatives to meet the unique preferences and needs of specific sections of your customer base, you are much more likely to drive action (and thus engagement). Amazon used this strategy to immense success by targeting students for its Prime program.

2. Create highly personalized initiatives

Personalization is a hugely under-leveraged strategy. It’s one thing to include a personal name at the beginning of an email. It’s another to encourage members to enter the birth dates of family members at sign-up and use that information to send tailored discounts and offers in the run-up to the big event.

Most managers responsible for running loyalty programs don’t take advantage of the huge array of personal details at their disposal. Customer experience can be dramatically improved when you tailor email promotions and rewards to include personalizaton; think relevant buying holidays (such as Mother’s or Valentine’s Day), personal celebrations, specific genders, locations and so on.

We’re not talking about general demographic or segmentation data here, but rather individual-specific details that you can use to automate highly targeted promotions or reward offers.

An added benefit of sending these highly personalized rewards is that they will increase trust over the long term. If you send your customers free points via email on their birthday or favorite shopping holiday, particularly when your competitors don’t, you’re much more likely to stand out.

3. Tailor your program to preferred platforms

Which platforms are your members using to check and redeem their points? Data about the kinds of devices and channels your customers prefer can be useful for deciding which platforms to prioritize.

If, for example, the majority of your eCommerce visitors shop on mobile, it makes sense to make your loyalty program directly available through mobile devices. Research by Exodus shows that 31% of consumers use an app to manage their loyalty rewards, so there is clearly a preference for certain access-points.

Most loyalty program managers take an omni-channel approach. And while this is certainly a laudable strategy, it usually falls short. The key is to hone in and optimize those channels that are most effective at engaging your membership.

4. Build feedback into your program

Do you have any feedback mechanisms in place to determine unserved needs and pain points among your members?

Indirect feedback exists in the form of data about your most popular rewards and promotions. You can use this information when creating new rewards or putting together future promotions. If, for example, most members swap their points for cash-back rewards, then you can offer variants and similar offers going forward.

But it’s also important to utilize other ways of collecting feedback. How often do you send email surveys to your loyalty members or include survey questions on your rewards pages? Are you listening to customer service recordings? Do you undertake user testing?

This is one of the big reasons that retailers often experience high rates of churn. They apply a rigorous set of methods to pinpoint customer needs and pains related to the buying process but none to the customer experience of their loyalty program members, where a unique set of issues are often present. If you want to boost retention, it’s vital that you listen closely to your existing members.

Conclusion: Loyalty programs are a powerful but underutilized tool

Loyalty programs are so popular among eCommerce retailers because they work. But it’s also vital to keep in mind that the market is incredibly saturated. The average American is a member of over 14 programs.

As ad costs soar and search engine traffic becomes scarcer, holding onto your existing customers is ever more important. This is why a data-driven approach to improving the customer experience of your loyalty program will almost certainly be relevant.

On the one hand, it will enable you to generate concrete insights for reducing churn. On the other, you have an opportunity to create a key competitive advantage by building a rewards program that is genuinely based on customer needs and preferences.

Now, time to start mining that data.

This is a guest post written by Skubana. Skubanaprovides an omni-channel eCommerce platform for unifying all aspects of your store’s operation. Skubana’s tools make it easy to manage inventory and shipping, automate laborious tasks and generate meaningful insights from on and off-site data.

It’s been a couple of years since we last asked you all about what you enjoy most (and least) about the Moz Blog, and to say our company and our industry had changed in those couple of years would be an enormous understatement.

With so much having changed, we wanted to be sure we’re still living up to the high standards we set for this blog, and that we’re still providing as valuable an experience as we can for you all. That’s where you come in today.

If you’ve got time, please consider going through the survey below, which asks about who you are, what challenges you face, and what you’d like to see more of on the Moz Blog.

We’ll publish the results along with our takeaways in a few weeks, and will use them to guide our work going forward. From all of us at Moz, thanks in advance for your time!

(If the embedded survey isn’t showing up properly below, click here to take it in a new tab.)

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Mobile devices now account for nearly 60 percent of all searches. Are your local sites and landing pages in the best position to show up in the SERPs and engage mobile consumers? Join us for an in-depth look at how to optimize your location-based marketing strategy for the mobile consumer. We’ll…

Opportunities to improve your ecommerce site search experience

The way we use the internet, including on ecommerce stores, is changing rapidly. More and more of us are choosing to shop online using our tablets and smartphones, rather than desktop computers. This, coupled with a gradual moving away from category-based menu systems, is bringing search into the spotlight, as consumers demand a quick and easy way to find exactly what they are looking for when shopping online. This is even more applicable on mobile devices.

As a result, growing numbers of retailers are starting to realise the potential that a strong, feature-rich search solution has for their business, and are exploring ways in which their own search offering can be overhauled to provide a better customer experience. In this article, we look at some of the ways that ecommerce site search can be improved, in order to bring it up to date with the latest developments in search technology and best practice.

1. Implement an NLP-based search tool

Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning are taking the ecommerce world by storm, shaking up various functions of an online store, including search, product recommendations and merchandising. More advanced, enterprise-level search solutions, like Klevu, use NLP to understand more about the query, in order to match results more accurately.

In search, natural language processing is used to understand more about the query, allowing the technology to answer what are essentially more complex asks. An example of a query that NLP would help with could be “salmon coloured backpack with a front pocket” – in this instance, Klevu would extract the data and use NLP to understand the key variables in the query and match to the terms that are used in catalog.

This context-driven, meaning-based approach of NLP means that search results are finally relevant to the customer’s search phrase. Clearly, the more accurate that search results become, the more likely the customer is to find what they want and actually make a purchase. The benefits go way beyond that initial purchase though, as a happy customer quickly becomes a loyal customer, returning again and again to a site that they feel really understands them as an individual.

Promote the use of your search function

From what we’ve seen with our clients, the use of on-site search has risen in recent years (generally around 10% – 25% of all users, depending on the prominence of the search box and the nature of the store), due in part to the growth in mobile internet usage. Despite this and the reports available in web analytics platforms (which generally show an uplift in search-led user journeys), it’s surprising to see that many online retailers are not positioning their search box more prominently – especially given that many of the market-leading merchants position search as a primary navigation option (eBay, AO.com, John Lewis, Amazon).

A prominent, bold search box that is clearly defined and easy to find could make a considerable difference for many retailers, helping users to find their desired product(s) quicker. Using language that encourages users to search, such as “search by product name, code, category or type” rather than a tiny magnifying glass icon, could also make a big impact. This is important on desktop, but far more so on mobile, as finding products via categories can be laboursome and increase the time to purchase considerably.

Include content search in results

When a visitor uses the search function on an ecommerce site, they could be at any stage in their purchasing journey. Some will be ready to commit to a purchase, others will be at the start of their journey, and could be looking for information about the product or about the store they are visiting. Including content pages in site search results can improve the customer experience for these early-stage customers, by giving them the information they are asking for. A search for ‘delivery’ or ‘returns’ should show the store’s delivery and returns pages, rather than some random products that somehow happen to have a keyword match, or no results at all.

Similarly, showing size guides, detailed specifications, product reviews, blog content and even buying guides could really help convert that information-hungry potential customer. Content search is not common on ecommerce stores currently, but it’s something that is gaining traction, as search tools become richer and more customer-focussed.

Use a good auto-suggest / predictive search

When a customer searches on an ecommerce store, they are generally trying to find something quickly. By adding ‘as-you-type’ product and category suggestions into the store’s search function, you are able to speed up that search dramatically. If the search is powered by an NLP-driven solution, product and category suggestions are likely to be accurate and highly relevant and can serve results that aren’t purely based on the keywords being used.

People inevitably make typing mistakes, or are unfamiliar with the spelling of brand names or products. Auto-suggest can kick in to present likely results after just three or four characters are typed into the search box. This reduces the potential for errors and speeds up access to results, with the end result being that the customer moves closer to a successful purchase transaction.

Implement a rich search interface

Using auto-suggest is just one part of a trend towards speeding up the search experience. Introducing a richer ‘quick results’ interface for search is another way that results can be presented more efficiently and faster to the customer. These panels will typically show thumbnails of the first few results, along with a link to view all results.

However, progressive retailers are also including links to relevant categories, content links, and even faceted search options in their dropdowns. This approach in a lot of cases takes the entire search process into the drop-down panel, removing or reducing the need for the traditional search results page. Redsgear.com, an outdoor gear specialist, has a great example of a rich search dropdown that also features infinite scroll to show all results.

Merchandise your results

Assuming an NLP-driven engine has been adopted to power search results for a site, the next step is to merchandise those results, to drive the maximum volume of sales. Search merchandising is made up of a number of component parts, but the key one for the more advanced merchants is around weighting the results.

A key requirement, especially for merchants with larger product catalogs, is the ability to weight key products, attributes and categories to ensure that the best products for the user and the business are being served. An example of this could be a fashion retailer weighting their top-selling products and also boosting a ‘summer’ attribute when they’re going into the new season, meaning their summer products will be promoted for their chosen queries.
One of the key features of Klevu is its self-learning technology, which adds a layer of boosting based on how users interact with results. As an example, if lots of users are clicking through and purchasing a specific product, this will be displayed higher for the relevant queries. The key drivers for this are purchases, ‘add to carts’ and clicks, which can make a big difference to the relevance and quality of results, particularly for longer-tail queries.

Improve zero results page

For stores using traditional keyword-driven search tools, the zero results page is an all-too-familiar occurrence and, be it far less, it still exists when using the most advanced technologies. Rather than simply stating ‘No results found’ or even suggesting that the customer has somehow made a mistake, a better approach is to try to salvage something from the situation and encourage the user to continue their journey.

We generally recommend that merchants display links to the most popular results and even a product recommendations block.

Analyse search data to improve product listings

We’ve focused so far on design and functional changes that can improve the search experience for online shoppers. One other key opportunity is in the area of search reporting and analytics. By examining site search statistics on a regular basis, it should be possible to make significant, material improvements to a store’s product catalog.

Identifying repeat searches that have a low conversion rate, despite there being an obvious set of products that should be converting for those phrases, could allow retailers to address issues in the product listings for those items. Products may have weak listings that could be improved, links to size guides might be added, or the product in question may have inventory errors that need to be corrected, which are preventing customers from buying those items. Analysing the poor performers in this way should provide trading opportunities for the store, and should also improve the customer experience over the long term, as they find it easier to locate the items they are looking for.
We’ll be doing a follow-up post around understanding the value of search in the coming months.

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For ecommerce stores, it can be hard to reach decisions on how and where to invest in third party systems, for maximum ROI. Looking at on-site search, however, could actually prove to be one of the most beneficial strategic decisions that a retailer could make, and could potentially generate substantial long-term improvements, by way of increased conversion rates, order values and repeat transactions, as well as optimised user journeys.

The post was written by Paul Rogers, who works for Klevu. Klevu is a leading eCommerce search solution, which offers a wide range of advanced features for mid-level and enterprise-level online retailers, including natural language processing, self-learning capabilities, advanced merchandising & boosting rules and in-depth reporting. Klevu can be used alongside any eCommerce platform and they have direct, plug-and-play solutions for Magento 1, Magento 2 and Shopify.

The top three reasons were People, Product and Opportunity. I met the people who make up our business and heard their stories from the past 18 years, learned about the platform and market leading status they had built in the UK, and saw that I could add value with my U.S. high growth business experience. I’ve been working with marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners for years across a series of different roles, and saw that I could apply what I’d learned from that and the start-up space to dotmailer’s U.S. operation. dotmailer has had clients in the U.S. for 12 years and we’re positioned to grow the user base of our powerful and easy-to-use platform significantly. I knew I could make a difference here, and what closed the deal for me was the people. Every single person I’ve met is deeply committed to the business, to the success of our customers and to making our solution simple and efficient. We’re a great group of passionate people and I’m proud to have joined the dotfamily.

Dan Morris, dotmailer’s EVP for North America in the new NYC office

Tell us a bit about your new role

dotmailer has been in business and in this space for more than 18 years. We were a web agency, then a Systems Integrator, and we got into the email business that way, ultimately building the dotmailer platform thousands of people use daily. This means we know this space better than anyone and we have the perfect solutions to align closely with our customers and the solutions flexible enough to grow with them. My role is to take all that experience and the platform and grow our U.S. presence. My early focus has been on identifying the right team to execute our growth plans. We want to be the market leader in the U.S. in the next three years – just like we’ve done in the UK – so getting the right people in the right spots was critical. We quickly assessed the skills of the U.S. team and made changes that were necessary in order to provide the right focus on customer success. Next, we set out to completely rebuild dotmailer’s commercial approach in the U.S. We simplified our offers to three bundles, so that pricing and what’s included in those bundles is transparent to our customers. We’ve heard great things about this already from clients and partners. We’re also increasing our resources on customer success and support. We’re intensely focused on ease of on-boarding, ease of use and speed of use. We consistently hear how easy and smooth a process it is to use dotmailer’s tools. That’s key for us – when you buy a dotmailer solution, we want to onboard you quickly and make sure you have all of your questions answered right away so that you can move right into using it. Customers are raving about this, so we know it’s working well.

What early accomplishments are you most proud of from your dotmailer time so far?

I’ve been at dotmailer for eight months now and I’m really proud of all we’ve accomplished together. We spent a lot of time assessing where we needed to restructure and where we needed to invest. We made the changes we needed, invested in our partner program, localized tech support, customer on-boarding and added customer success team members. We have the right people in the right roles and it’s making a difference. We have a commercial approach that is clear with the complete transparency that we wanted to provide our customers. We’ve got a more customer-focused approach and we’re on-boarding customers quickly so they’re up and running faster. We have happier customers than ever before and that’s the key to everything we do.

You’ve moved the U.S. team to a new office. Can you tell us why and a bit about the new space?

I thought it was very important to create a NY office space that was tied to branding and other offices around the world, and also had its own NY energy and culture for our team here – to foster collaboration and to have some fun. It was also important for us that we had a flexible space where we could welcome customers, partners and resellers, and also hold classes and dotUniversity training sessions. I’m really grateful to the team who worked on the space because it really reflects our team and what we care about. At any given time, you’ll see a training session happening, the team collaborating, a customer dropping in to ask a few questions or a partner dropping in to work from here. We love our new, NYC space.

What did you learn from your days in the start-up space that you’re applying at dotmailer?

The start-up space is a great place to learn. You have to know where every dollar is going and coming from, so every choice you make needs to be backed up with a business case for that investment. You try lots of different things to see if they’ll work and you’re ready to turn those tactics up or down quickly based on an assessment of the results. You also learn things don’t have to stay the way they are, and can change if you make them change. You always listen and learn – to customers, partners, industry veterans, advisors, etc. to better understand what’s working and not working. dotmailer has been in business for 18 years now, and so there are so many great contributors across the business who know how things have worked and yet are always keen to keep improving. I am constantly in listening and learning mode so that I can understand all of the unique perspectives our team brings and what we need to act on.

What are your plans for the U.S. and the sales function there?

On our path to being the market leader in the U.S., I’m focused on three things going forward: 1 – I want our customers to be truly happy. It’s already a big focus in the dotmailer organization – and we’re working hard to understand their challenges and goals so we can take product and service to the next level. 2 – Creating an even more robust program around partners, resellers and further building out our channel partners to continuously improve sales and customer service programs. We recently launched a certification program to ensure partners have all the training and resources they need to support our mutual customers. 3 – We have an aggressive growth plan for the U.S. and I’m very focused on making sure our team is well trained, and that we remain thoughtful and measured as we take the steps to grow. We want to always keep an eye on what we’re known for – tools that are powerful and simple to use – and make sure everything else we offer remains accessible and valuable as we execute our growth plans.

What are the most common questions that you get when speaking to a prospective customer?

The questions we usually get are around price, service level and flexibility. How much does dotmailer cost? How well are you going to look after my business? How will you integrate into my existing stack and then my plans for future growth? We now have three transparent bundle options with specifics around what’s included published right on our website. We have introduced a customer success team that’s focused only on taking great care of our customers and we’re hearing stories every day that tells me this is working. And we have all of the tools to support our customers as they grow and to also integrate into their existing stacks – often integrating so well that you can use dotmailer from within Magento, Salesforce or Dynamics, for example.

Can you tell us about the dotmailer differentiators you highlight when speaking to prospective customers that seem to really resonate?

In addition to the ones above – ease of use, speed of use and the ability to scale with you. With dotmailer’s tiered program, you can start with a lighter level of functionality and grow into more advanced functionality as you need it. The platform itself is so easy to use that most marketers are able to build campaigns in minutes that would have taken hours on other platforms. Our customer success team is also with you all the way if ever you want or need help. We’ve built a very powerful platform and we have a fantastic team to help you with personalized service as an extended part of your team and we’re ready to grow with you.

How much time is your team on the road vs. in the office? Any road warrior tips to share?

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road, one year I attended 22 tradeshows! Top tip when flying is to be willing to give up your seat for families or groups once you’re at the airport gate, as you’ll often be rewarded with a better seat for helping the airline make the family or group happy. Win win! Since joining dotmailer, I’m focused on being in office and present for the team and customers as much as possible. I can usually be found in our new, NYC office where I spend a lot of time with our team, in customer meetings, in trainings and other hosted events, sales conversations or marketing meetings. I’m here to help the team, clients and partners to succeed, and will always do my best to say yes! Once our prospective customers see how quickly and efficiently they can execute tasks with dotmailer solutions vs. their existing solutions, it’s a no-brainer for them. I love seeing and hearing their reactions.

I’m originally from Yorkshire in England, and grew up just outside York. I moved to the U.S. about seven years ago to join a very fast growing startup, we took it from 5 to well over 300 people which was a fantastic experience. I moved to NYC almost two years ago, and I love exploring this great city. There’s so much to see and do. Outside of dotmailer, my passion is cars, and I also enjoy skeet shooting, almost all types of music, and I love to travel – my goal is to get to India, Thailand, Australia and Japan in the near future.

Without a site that’s precision engineered for a good user experience and high conversion rates, all of your email marketing efforts could be going to waste.

Of course, you do want to market your business and email campaigns are statistically proven to be one of the most successful avenues to do so – according to McKinsey, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter. VentureBeat also released this year that according to their research, email is generating better return on investment than any other channel. So how do you make sure your site is secure and effective enough to keep customers there once your campaign has enticed them this far?

The homepage
For the majority of visitors, your homepage will be the first impression you get to make. A great homepage factors in a number of different ingredients to create the biggest positive impact on the user. Chief of which are…

Engagement
A great homepage is above all engaging, instantly connecting a potential customer with the brand. Engagement comes from a website having personality and a clear message, a customer should feel comfortable with the design and want to interact with it. Take the example below – Mardon, an international seafood import and export company. The large cinematic image captures attention, while the well positioned brand and informative footer let the user know who they’re interacting with. The elements on the page come together to create a beautiful and simple looking design with the feel of a company you can trust and, as a result, want to engage with.

mardon.com designed and built by Nublue.co.uk

The human element
In most cases (and where relevant), adding a human element to your homepage will encourage a positive reaction from users. Having a real life human being can enable customers to relate to your business and products more effectively. We believe in this philosophy so much that our own staff feature heavily throughout our site. Using actual staff members allows you to showcase your people, your greatest asset.

The www.nublue.co.uk homepage

Excellent user experience
Once you’ve made an excellent first impression, you’ll need a functional and user-friendly website that ensures customers aren’t left frustrated by complex navigation or slow load times. Simple, intuitive menus and navigation alongside a website that’s fast enough to keep your users from having to wait.

Load speed is critical. According to surveys done by Gomez.com, 79% of online shoppers who have trouble with web site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again. There are also statistics that suggest consumers will abandon a site that isn’t loaded within three seconds. High performance hosting is vital to addressing this issue and your site could benefit from the use of a CDN. CDN (Content Delivery Networks) improve speed by offloading your site’s static content – such as images and CSS. This frees up your hosting package to serve only the dynamic parts of your site. The result is a faster, smoother running site, regardless of the user’s location.

Better conversion processes
Trying to get people to make a purchase from an email isn’t easy and the fewer potential stumbling blocks you put in a customer’s way the better.

For ecommerce sites, an optimised checkout with guest login will produce a much smoother, simpler and more effective conversion process. Offering guest login at checkout gives the user an option of either signing up for an account or checking out without doing so, and prevents losing any sales at the last moment.

Another best practice is to introduce ‘trust signals’ so that customers feel confidence in buying from your site. Trust signals range from having visible reviews and testimonials onsite, to things like SSL certificates – which are visible in the url bar and prevent third parties seeing or accessing a customer’s personal details between their browser and your server, through encryption.

An expert design and development team will together implement the best features and functionality using a user-centric approach to ‘reverse-engineer’ your site. Effectively creating the best and simplest customer journey, improving both customer experience and conversion levels, whilst making it as quick and easy as possible for customers to buy from you.

Summary
When sending an email campaign, it’s vital that your website is not the weak link in the marketing chain and that leads are clicking through to a secure and effective page. At the heart of an effective website is a full understanding of your audience and the expertise to clearly guide them through the actions you want them to take. This is ultimately accomplished through user friendly navigation and beautiful and engaging design.

The site’s features and functionality need to be thought about and in order to get a website that’s fast enough, you’ll need a tailored, high performance hosting solution – such as CDN.

This post was created by Nublue, a web hosting and Magento ecommerce agency and partner of dotmailer.

Every two years, Moz surveys the brightest minds in SEO and search marketing with a comprehensive set of questions meant to gauge the current workings of Google’s search algorithm. This year’s panel of experts possesses a truly unique set of knowledge and perspectives. We’re thankful on behalf of the entire community for their contribution.

In addition to asking the participants about what does and doesn’t work in Google’s ranking algorithm today, one of the most illuminating group of questions asks the panel to predict the future of search – how the features of Google’s algorithm are expected to change over the next 12 months.

Amazingly, almost all of the factors that are expected to increase in influence revolved around user experience, including:

Mobile-friendliness

Perceived value

Readability

…and more

The experts predicted that more traditional ranking signals, such as those around links and URL structures, would largely remain the same, while the more manipulative aspects of SEO, like paid links and anchor text (which is subject to manipulation), would largely decrease in influence.

The survey also asks respondents to weight the importance of various factors within Google’s current ranking algorithm (on a scale of 1-10). Understanding these areas of importance helps to inform webmasters and marketers where to invest time and energy in working to improve the search presence of their websites.

On-page keyword features

These features describe use of the keyword term/phrase in particular parts of the HTML code on the page (title element, H1s, alt attributes, etc).

Titles are still very powerful. Overall, it’s about focus and matching query syntax. If your post is about airplane propellers but you go on a three paragraph rant about gorillas, you’re going to have a problem ranking for airplane propellers.

Keyword usage is vital to making the cut, but we don’t always see it correlate with ranking, because we’re only looking at what already made the cut. The page has to be relevant to appear for a query, IMO, but when it comes to how high the page ranks once it’s relevant, I think keywords have less impact than they once did. So, it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition to ranking.

In my experience, most of problems with organic visibility are related to on-page factors. When I look for an opportunity, I try to check for 2 strong things: presence of keyword in the title and in the main content. Having both can speed up your visibility, especially on long-tail queries.

It’s very easy to link keyword-rich domains with their success in Google’s results for the given keyword. I’m always mindful about other signals that align with domain name which may have contributed to its success. These includes inbound links, mentions, and local citations.

High-quality links still rule rankings. The way a brand can earn links has become more important over the years, whereas link schemes can hurt a site more than ever before. There is a lot of FUD slinging in this respect!

Similar to my thoughts on content, I suspect link-based metrics are going to be used increasingly with a focus on verisimilitude (whether content is actually true or not) and relationships between nodes in Knowledge Graph. Google’s recent issues with things, such as the snippet results for “evolution,” highlight the importance of them only pulling things that are factually correct for featured parts of a SERP. Thus, just counting traditional link metrics won’t cut it anymore.

This is clearly on deck to change very soon with the reintegration of Twitter into Google’s Real-Time Results. It will be interesting to see how this affects the “Breaking News” box and trending topics. Social influencers, quality and quantity of followers, RTs, and favorites will all be a factor. And what’s this?! Hashtags will be important again?! Have mercy!

It’s already noticeable; brands are more prominently displayed in search results for both informational and commercial queries. I’m expecting Google will be paying more attention to brand-related metrics from now on (and certainly more initiatives to encourage site owners to optimize for better entity detection).

Page-level social features

These features relate to third-party metrics from social media sources (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc) for the ranking page.

Highest influence: Engagement with content/URL on social networks, 3.87Lowest influence: Upvotes for the page on social sites, 2.7

Social ranking factors are important in a revamped Query Deserves Freshness algorithm. Essentially, if your content gets a lot of natural tweets, shares, and likes, it will rank prominently for a short period of time, until larger and more authoritative sites catch up.

Social popularity has several factors to consider: (1) Years ago, Google and Bing said they take into account the authority of a social profile sharing a link and the popularity of the link being shared (retweets/reshares), and there was more complexity to social signals that was never revealed even back then. (2) My experience has been that social links and shares have more power for newsy/fresh-type content. For example, a lot of social shares for a dentist’s office website wouldn’t be nearly as powerful (or relevant to consider) as a lot of social shares for an article on a site with a constant flow of fresh content.

Honestly, I do not think that the so-called “social signals” have any direct influence on the Google Algorithm (that does not mean that a correlation doesn’t exist, though). My only doubt is related to Twitter, because of the renewed contract between Google and Twitter itself. That said, as of now I do not consider Twitter to offer any ranking signals, except for very specific niches related to news and “news-able” content, where QDF plays a fundamental role.

By branching mobile search off of Google’s core ranking algorithm, having a “mobile-friendly” website is probably now less important for desktop search rankings. Our clients are seeing an ever-increasing percentage of organic search traffic coming from mobile devices, though (particularly in retail), so this is certainly not an excuse to ignore responsive design – the opposite, in fact. Click-through rate from the SERPs has been an important ranking signal for a long time and continues to be, flagging irrelevant or poor-quality search listings.

I believe many of these will be measured within the ecosystem, rather than absolutely. For example, the effect of bounce rate (or rather, bounce speed) on a site will be relative to the bounce speeds on other pages in similar positions for similar terms.

I want to answer these a certain way because, while I have been told by Google what matters to them, what I see in the SERPs does not back up what Google claims they want. There are a lot of sites out there with horrible UX that rank in the top three. While I believe it’s really important for conversion and to bring customers back, I don’t feel as though Google is all that concerned, based on the sites that rank highly. Additionally, Google practically screams “unique content,” yet sites that more or less steal and republish content from other sites are still ranking highly. What I think should matter to Google doesn’t seem to matter to them, based on the results they give me.

Domain-level link authority features

These features describe link metrics about the domain hosting the page.

Highest influence: Quantity of unique linking domains to the domain, 7.45Lowest influence: Sentiment of the external links pointing to the site, 3.91

Quantity and quality of unique linking domains at the domain level is still among the most significant factors in determining how a domain will perform as a whole in the organic search results, and is among the best SEO “spot checks” for determining if a site will be successful relative to other competitor sites with similar content and selling points.

Throughout this survey, when I say “no direct influence,” this is interchangeable with “no direct positive influence.” For example, I’ve marked exact match domain as low numbers, while their actual influence may be higher – though negatively.

Topical relevancy has, in my opinion, gained much ground as a relevant ranking factor. Although I find it most at play when at page level, I am seeing significant shifts at overall domain relevancy, by long-tail growth or by topically-relevant domains linking to sites. One way I judge such movements is the growth of the long-tail relevant to the subject or ranking, when neither anchor text (exact match or synonyms) nor exact phrase is used in a site’s content, yet it still ranks very highly for long-tail and mid-tail synonyms.

Domain-level keyword-agnostic features

These features relate to the entire root domain, but don’t directly describe link- or keyword-based elements. Instead, they relate to things like the length of the domain name in characters.

Highest influence: Uniqueness of content across the whole site, 7.52Lowest influence: Length of time until domain name expires, 2.45

Character length of domain name is another correlative yet not causative factor, in my opinion. They don’t need to rule these out – it just so happens that longer domain names get clicked on, so they get ruled out quickly.

A few points: Google’s document inception date patents describe how Google might handle freshness and maturity of content for a query. The “trust signal” pages sound like a site quality metric that Google might use to score a page on the basis of site quality. Some white papers from Microsoft on web spam signals identified multiple hyphens in subdomains as evidence of web spam. The length of time until the domain expires was cited as a potential signal in Google’s patent on information retrieval through historic data, and was refuted by Matt Cutts after domain sellers started trying to use that information to sell domain extensions to “help the SEO” of a site.

I think that page speed only becomes a factor when it is significantly slow. I think that having error pages on the site doesn’t matter, unless there are so many that it greatly impacts Google’s ability to crawl.

Mobile will continue to increase, with directly-related factors increasing as well. Structured data will increase, along with more data partners and user segmentation/personalization of SERPs to match query intent, localization, and device-specific need states.

I really think that over the next 12-18 months we are going to see a larger impact of structured data in the SERPs. In fact, we are already seeing this. Google has teams that focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning. They are studying “relationships of interest” and, at the heart of what they are doing, are still looking to provide the most relevant result in the quickest fashion. Things like schema that help “educate” the search engines as to a given topic or entity are only going to become more important as a result.

Finally, we leave you with this infographic created by Kevin Engle which shows the relative weighting of broad areas of Google’s algorithm, according to the experts.

What’s your opinion on the future of search and SEO? Let us know in the comments below.

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Before you start reading, I want to say that I am not an analytics expert per se, but a strategic SEO and digital marketing consultant. On the other hand, in my daily work of auditing and designing holistic digital marketing strategies, I deal a lot with Analytics in order to understand my clients’ gaps and opportunities.

For that reason, what you are going to read isn’t an “ultimate guide,” but instead my personal and practical guide to content and its metrics, filled with links to useful resources that helped me solving the big contents’ metric mystery. I happily expect to see your ideas in the comments.

The difference between content and formats

One of the hardest things to measure is content effectiveness, mostly because there exists great confusion about its changing nature and purpose. One common problem is thinking of “content” and “formats” as synonyms, which leads to frustration and, with the wrong scaling processes present, may also lead to Google disasters.

What is the difference between content and formats?

Content is any message a brand/person delivers to an audience;

Formats are the specific ways a brand/person can deliver that message (e.g. data visualizations, written content, images/photos, video, etc.).

Just to be clear: We engage and eventually share the ideas and emotions that content represents, not its formats. Formats are just the clothing we choose for our content, and keeping the fashion metaphor, some ways of dressing are better than others for making a message more explicit.

Strategy, as in everything in marketing, also plays a very important role when it comes to content.

It is during the strategic phase that we attempt to understand (both thanks to our own site analysis and competitive analysis of others’ sites) if our content is responding to our audience’s interests and needs, and also to understand what metrics we must choose in order to assess its success or failure.

Paraphrasing an old Pirelli commercial tagline: Content without strategy is nothing.

Strategy: Starting with why/how/what

When we are building a content strategy, we should ask ourselves (and our clients and CMOs) these classic questions:

Why does the brand exist?

How does the brand solidify its “why?”

What specific tactics will the brand use for successfully developing the “how?”

Only when we have those answers can we understand the goals of our content, what metrics to consider, and how to calculate them.

Let use an example every Mozzer can understand.

Why does Moz exist?

The answer is in its tagline:

Inbound marketing is complicated. Moz’s software makes it easy.

How does Moz solidify its “why?”

Moz produces a series of tools, which help marketers in auditing, monitoring and taking insightful decisions about their web marketing projects.

Moreover, Moz creates and publishes content, which aims to educate marketers to do their jobs better.

If you notice, we can already pick out a couple of generic goals here:

Leads > subscriptions;

Awareness (that may ultimately drive leads).

What specific tactics does Moz use for successfully achieving its main goals?

Considering the nature of the two main goals we clarified above, we can find content tactics covering all the areas of the so-called content matrix.

Some classic content matrix models are the ones developed by Distilled (in the image above) and Smart Insights and First 10, but it is a good idea to develop your own based on the insights you may have about your specific industry niche.

The things Moz does are many, so I am presenting an incomplete list here.

In the “Purchase” side and with conversion and persuasion as end goals:

Home page and “Products” section of Moz.com (we can define them as “organic landing pages”);

Content about tools

Free tools;

Pro tools (which are substantially free for a 30-day trial period).

CPC landing pages;

Price page with testimonials;

“About” section;

Events sponsorship.

In the “Awareness” side and with educational and entertainment (or pure engagement) purposes:

The blogs (both the main blog and UGC);

The “Learn and Connect” section, which includes the Q&A;

Guides;

Games (The SEO Expert Quiz can surely be considered a game);

Webinars;

Social media publishing;

Email marketing

Live events (MozCon and LocalUp, but also the events where Moz Staff is present with one or more speakers).

Once we have the content inventory of our web site, we can relatively easily identify the specific goals for the different pieces of content, and of the single type of content we own and will create.

I will usually not consider content like tools, sponsorship, or live events, because even though content surely plays a role in their goals’ achievement, there are also other factors like user satisfaction and serendipity involved which are not directly related to content itself or cannot be easily measured.

Measuring landing/conversion pages’ content

This may be the easier kind of content to measure, because it is deeply related to the more general measures of leads and conversions, and it is also strongly related to everything CRO.

We can measure the effectiveness of our landing/conversion pages’ content easily with Google Analytics, especially if we remember to implement content grouping (here’s the official Google guide) and follow the suggestions Jeff Sauer offered in this post on Moz.

On the other hand, we should always remember that the default conversion rate metric should not be taken as the only metric to incorporate into decision-making; the same is true when it comes to content performance and optimization. In fact, as Dan Barker said once, the better we segment our analysis the better we can understand the performance of our money pages, give a better meaning to the conversion rate value and, therefore, correct and improve our sales and leads.

Good examples of segmentation are:

Conversions per returning visitor vs new visitor;

Conversions per type of visitor based on demographic data;

Conversions per channel/device.

These segmented metrics are fundamental for developing A/B tests with our content.

Here are some examples of A/B tests for landing/conversion pages’ content:

Title tags and meta description A/B tests (yes, title tags and meta descriptions are content too, and they have a fundamental role in CTR and “first impressions”);

Prominent presence of testimonials vs. a more discreet one;

Tone of voice used in the product description (copywriting experiment);

Product slideshow vs. video.

Here are a few additional sources about CRO and content, surely better than me for inspiring you in this specific field:

Measuring on-site “editorial” content

Here is where things start getting a little more complicated.

Blog posts, guides, white papers, and similar content usually do not have a conversion/lead nature, at leastnot directly. Usually their goals are more intangible ones, such as creating awareness, likability, trust, and authority.

In other cases, then, this kind of content also serves the objective of creating and maintaining an active community, as it does in the case of Moz. I tend to consider this a subset, though, because in many niches creating a community is not a top priority. Or, even if it is, it does not offer a reliable flux of “signals” so as to appropriately measure the effectiveness of our content because of pure lack of statistical evidence.

A good starting place is measuring the so-called consumption metrics.

Again, the ideal is to implement content grouping in Google Analytics (see the video above), because that way we can segment every different kind of editorial content.

For instance, if we have a blog, not only we can create a group for it, but we can also create

This are just three examples; think about your own measuring needs and the nature of your content, and you will come out with other ideas for content groupings.

The following are basic metrics that you’ll need to consider when measuring your editorial content:

Pageviews / Unique Pageviews

Pages / Session

Time on Page

The ideal is to analyze these metrics at least with these secondary levels:

Medium / Sources, so you can understand what channel contributed the most to your content visibility. Remember, though, that dark search/social is a reality that can screw up your metrics (check out Marshall Simmonds’ deck from MozCon 2015);

User Type, so to see what percent of the Pageviews is due to returning visitors (a good indicator of the level of trust and authority our content has) and new ones (which indicates the ability our content has to attract new potentially long-lasting readers);

Mobile, which is useful in understanding the environments in which our users mostly interact with our content, and how we have to optimize its experience depending on the device used, hence helping making our content more memorable.

You surely can have fun also analyzing your content’s performance by segmenting them per demographic indicators. For instance, it may be interesting to see what affinity categories of your readers there are, depending on the categorization used in your blog and that you have replicated in your content grouping. This, in fact, can help us in better understanding the personas composing our audience, and so refining the targeting of our content.

As you can see, I did not mention bounce rate as a metric to consider, and there is a reason for that: Bounce rate is tricky, and its misinterpretation can lead to bad decisions.

Instead of bounce rate, when it comes to editorial content (and blog posts in particular), I prefer to consider scroll completion, a metric we can retrieve using Tag Manager (see this post by Optimize Smart).

Finally, especially if you also grouped content for outstanding format used (video, embedded SlideShare, etc.), you will need to retrieve users’ interactions through Tag Manager. However, if you really want to dig into the analysis of how that content is consumed by users, you will need to export your Analytics data and then combine it with data from external sources, like YouTube Analytics, SlideShare Analytics, etc.

The more we share, the more we have. This is also true in Marketing.

Consumption metrics, though, are not enough in order to understand the performance of your content, especially if you strongly rely on a community and one of the content objectives is creating and growing a community around your brand.

I usually add comments into these Metrics, because of the social nature comments have. Again, thanks to Tag Manager, you can easily tag when someone clicks on the “add comment” button.

A final metric we should always consider is the page value. As Google itself explains in that Help Page:

Page value is a measure of influence. It’s a single number that can help you better understand which pages on your site drive conversions and revenue. Pages with a high Page Value are more influential than pages with a low Page Value [Page Value is also shown for groups of content].

The combined analysis of consumption and social metrics can offer us a very granular understanding of how our content is performing, therefore how to optimize our strategy and/or how to start conducting A/B tests.

On the other hand, such a granular vision is not the ideal for reporting, especially if we have to report to a board of directors and not to our in-house or in-agency counterpart.

In that case being able to resume all these metrics (or the most relevant ones) in just one metric is very useful.

How to do it? My suggestion is to follow (and adapt to your own needs) the methodology used by the Moz editorial team and described in this post by Trevor Klein.

What about the ROI of editorial content? Don’t give up; I’ll talk about it below.

Measuring the ROI of content marketing and content-based link building campaigns

Theoretically measuring the ROI of something is relatively easy:

(Return – Investment) / Investment = ROI.

However the difficulty is not in that formula itself, but in the values used in that formula.

How to calculate the investment value?

Usually we have a given budget assigned for our content marketing and/or content-based campaigns. If that is the case, perfect! We have a figure to use for the investment value.

A complete different situation is when we must present a budget proposal and/or assign part of the budget to each campaign in a balanced and considered way.

In this post by Caroline Gilbert for Siege Media you can find great suggestions about how to calculate a content marketing budget, but I would like to present mine, too, which is based on competitive analysis.

Here’s what I do:

Identify the distinct competitors which created content related to what we will target with our campaign. I rely on both SERP analysis (i.e.: using the Keyword Difficulty Tool by Moz) and information we can retrieve with a “keyword search” on Buzzsumo.

Social shares per kind of social network (these are available from BuzzSumo). Remember that some of these social shares can be tallied by sponsored content (check this Social Media Explorer post about how to do Facebook competitive analysis).

Consider the delta between what the client/company invested in content marketing (or link building, if it is moving from classic old link building to modern link earning) before, as well as the median investment value of the competitors.

Calculate and propose the content marketing / content-based campaign’s value in a range which goes from “minimum viable budget” to “ideal.”

Reality teaches us that the proposed investment is not the same than the real investment, but at least we then have some data for proposing it and not just a gut feeling. However, we must be prepared to work with budgets that are more on the “minimum viable” side than on the ideal one.

How to calculate revenue?

You can find a good number of ROI calculators, but I particularly like the Fractl one, because it is very easy to understand and use.

Their general philosophy is to calculate ROI in terms of how much traffic, links, and social shares the content itself has generated organically, hence how much it helped saving in paid promotion.

If you look at it, it reminds the methodology I described above (points 1 to 7).

However, when it comes to social shares, you should avoid the classic mistake of considering only the social shares directly generated by the page your content has been published.

For instance, let’s take the Idioms of the World campaigns Verve Search did for HotelClub.com and which won the European Search Awards.

If we we look only at its own social share metrics, we will have just a partial picture:

Instead, if we see what are the social shares metrics of the pages that linked and talked about it, we will have the complete picture.

As you can imagine, you can calculate the ROI of your editorial content using the same methodology.

Obviously the Fractl ROI calculator is far from being perfect, as it does not consider the offline repercussion a content campaign may have (the Idioms of the World campaign was organically published in a outstanding placement on The Guardian’s paper version, for instance), but it is a solid base for crafting your own ROI calculation.

Conclusions

So, we have arrived at the end of this personal guide about content and its metrics.

Remember these important things:

Don’t be data driven, be data informed;

Think strategically, act tactically;

Content’s metrics vary depending on the goals of content itself.

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To all Moz Local fans in the UK, I’m excited to announce that your wait is over. As the sun rises “across the pond” this morning, Moz Local is officially live in the United Kingdom!

A bit of background

As many of you know, we released the US version of Moz Local in March 2014. After 12 months of terrific growth in the US, and a boatload of technical improvements and feature releases–especially for Enterprise customers–we released the Check Listing feature for a limited set of partner search engines and directories in the UK in April of this year.

Over 20,000 of you have checked your listings (or your clients’ listings) in the last 3-1/2 months. Those lookups have helped us refine and improve the background technology immensely (more on that below). We’ve been just as eager to release the fully-featured product as you’ve been to use it, and the technical pieces have finally fallen into place for us to do so.

How does it work?

The concept is the same as the US version of Moz Local: show you how accurately and completely your business is listed on the most important local search platforms and directories, and optimize and perfect as many of those business listings as we can on your behalf.

For customers specifically looking for you, accurate business listings are obviously important. For customers who might not know about you yet, they’re also among the most important factors for ranking in local searches on Google. Basically, the more times Google sees your name, address, phone, and website listed the same way on quality local websites, the more trust they have in your business, and the higher you’re likely to rank.

Moz Local is designed to help on both these fronts.

To use the product, you simply need to type a name and postcode at moz.com/local. We’ll then show you a list of the closest matching listings we found. We prioritize verified listing information that we find on Google or Facebook, and selecting one of those verified listings means we’ll be able to distribute it on your behalf.

Clicking on a result brings you to a full details report for that listing. We’ll show you how accurate and complete your listings are now, and where they could be after using our product.

Clicking the tabs beneath the Listing Score graphic will show you some of the incompletions and inconsistencies that publishing your listing with Moz Local will address.

For customers with hundreds or thousands of locations, bulk upload is also available using a modified version of your data from Google My Business–feel free to e-mail enterpriselocal@moz.com for more details.

Where do we distribute your data?

We’ve prioritized the most important commercial sites in the UK local search ecosystem, and made them the centerpieces of Moz Local. We’ll update your data directly on globally-important players Factual and Foursquare, and the UK-specific players CentralIndex, Thomson Local, and the Scoot network–which includes key directories like TouchLocal, The Independent, The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Scotsman, and Wales Online.

We’ll be adding two more major destinations shortly, and for those of you who sign up before that time, your listings will be automatically distributed to the additional destinations when the integrations are complete.

How much does it cost?

The cost per listing is £84/year, which includes distribution to the sites mentioned above with unlimited updates throughout the year, monitoring of your progress over time, geographically- focused reporting, and the ability to find and close duplicate listings right from your Moz Local dashboard–all the great upgrades that my colleague Noam Chitayat blogged about here.

What’s next?

Well, as I mentioned just a couple paragraphs ago, we’ve got two additional destinations to which we’ll be sending your data in very short order. Once those integrations are complete, we’ll be just a few weeks away from releasing our biggest set of features since we launched. I look forward to sharing more about these features at BrightonSEO at the end of the summer!

For those of you around the world in Canada, Australia, and other countries, we know there’s plenty of demand for Moz Local overseas, and we’re working as quickly as we can to build additional relationships abroad. And to our friends in the UK, please let us know how we can continue to make the product even better!

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